Sickness

In Promo by Isaac Danvers

You wake up in an unfamiliar room, one where the walls are lined with medical equipment… but not any kind  you’d see in a modern hospital. Your arms are latched to the bed by leather straps and escape feels impossible. But, as luck would have it, one of the cuffs is severely frayed. With a few quick yanks your hand breaks free and you quickly unlatch the other straps. You roll to get out of the bed and smack the cold hard ground, realizing just how woozy you feel as you find your footing.

Around you are multiple tools and jars holding a variety of organs from hearts to kidneys. However, one catches your eye, a jar holding a human head.

And the head is moving.

The label on the jar reads ‘Never Dead Dan’, and the head makes eye contact with you, urging you forward. You reach out, unscrewing the jar almost on instinct and pulling the head free from its prison as it sputters and coughs. The head looks you in the eyes  then looks right past you in pure fear.

“Run.”

You glance behind you and see a towering figure storming into the room! His plague doctor’s mask obscures his face as he stares you down, a sneer in his voice. “Why aren’t you in bed? You’re sick, you must be cured. Don’t you want to be cured?” His voice permeates your head, freezing you in place until the head in your hand speaks once more.

“RUN!”

The doctor barges towards you and your feet move all on their own as you drop the head and rush to the other side of the room and out an adjacent door! The sounds of glass smashing echoes out of the room as you run down the hall! As quickly as you move your blood rushes to your head and your wooziness comes back as you stumble, slamming into the walls of this decrepit asylum. You move past door after door, reaching out to open them only to find them locked and refusing to open!

Then comes the footsteps.

The terrifying footsteps following you from behind, moving faster and faster as you go from door to door! Your body begins to feel heavy as your eyelids fight to stay open. You can’t hide, you can barely run. What can you do? In pure desperation you slam yourself into one last door.

Crack!

The frame splinters from the impact and you fall into the open room! A lone dirty light swings overhead as your eyes adjust to the lower light only to see something terrifying beyond your comprehension.

Bodies torn asunder.

Blood leaking into a grate in the floor.

And a tray of organs in front of you, all of them in some state of rot or decay.

“Pay them no mind. They were sick, they couldn’t be cured. But you will be different.” The voice of the doctor calls from the doorway behind you. You turn around and in an instant a needle enters your throat! He pushes down the plunger and you once a gain find yourself woozy in his hands.

“You’ll be different.”